Xref: utzoo comp.lang.misc:4520 comp.edu:3109
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!aiai!jeff
From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc,comp.edu
Subject: Re: Abelson & Sussman
Message-ID: <2076@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 19 Mar 90 19:44:34 GMT
References: <3793@tukki.jyu.fi>
Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 31

In article <3793@tukki.jyu.fi> sakkinen@jytko.jyu.fi (Markku Sakkinen) writes:
>I now got my hands on a copy of the book (5. printing, 1987,
>no changes to the original printing from 1985 mentioned).

There are some, but they don't change the aspects you comment on.

>The name is misleading: it should be "... of Lisp Programs".

The idea is that it's a book about programming rather than about
programming languages, but they had to pick some notation and chose
Scheme.  You may wish they'd chosen something else or written a book
like Ravi Sethi's _Programming Languages_ (an excellent book in my
opinion) instead; but since their aim wasn't to cover the varieties
of programming lamnguages, it's not surprising that they didn't.

They are fairly clear about what they're trying to do.  Eg:

   ... we believe that the essential material to be addressed
   by a subject at this level is not the syntax of particular
   programming-language constructs, nor ... [p. xv]

>The book contains a lot of stuff and may be very good in several
>aspects. However, it is a strong entrant in the "most biassed
>programming textbook ever published" competition.

I suggest that it simply had different goals than the others.

I further suggest that you notice the bias more because it is in
a direction that is unfamiliar.

-- Jeff